MP slams ‘ignorant’ Severn bridge rant

AN MP’s rebuke to a columnist who managed to insult Wales three times in just six sentences has gone viral on social media.

Rod Liddle caused outrage with a Sunday Times column in which he mocked Wales and the Welsh language and accused its people of “moaning” about plans to rename the second Severn crossing (pictured) as the Prince of Wales Bridge.

Liddle said the Welsh would “prefer it to be called something indecipherable with no real vowels, such as Ysgythysgymlngwchgwch Bryggy”.

Arfon MP Hywel Williams hit back with a Twitter response which has been liked more than 5,000 times. He said: “Someone called Rod Liddle says in the Sunday Times that ‘Welsh has no real vowels’. ‘Ignorant’ has three vowels. ‘Ignorant’ in Welsh is ‘anwybodus’ and has five.”

It was announced last week the bridge would be renamed the Prince of Wales Bridge later this year to mark Prince Charles’ 70th birthday year.

In his article, Liddle says the Welsh are “moaning” about the renaming, which he claims links the “rain-sodden valleys with the First World”.

A spokesperson for the Sunday Times said: “We believe his brief item about the new Severn bridge is well within the rules of the Editors’ Code, which explicitly safeguards the right of the press ‘to be partisan, to challenge, shock, be satirical and to entertain’.”